Puzzle Box
by HeatherAMartin121
Summary: Sherlock receives a box that offers him a new puzzle. Will this be the detectives last?  Reviews would be much appreciated! Warning: Very mild slash references.


The long white fingers curved elegantly around the soft porcelain of the old, chipped coffee mug. They closed around the hot surface and brought the cup to pale, cupid-bow lips. The liquid slipped past lips, around the eager tongue and down the pale throat, scalding it slightly as it went. The drinker hardly noticed. The bitter tang of hot Earl Gray filled his senses and he set the mug down, sighing in contentment. The sound of porcelain on glass filled the room momentarily and then was once again engulfed in silence. Closing his eyes and steepling his hands beneath his chin, Sherlock Holmes relaxed back into the sofa. He allowed himself a moment to not think. A time that wasn't about analysis. He savoured the last traces of tea in his mouth, on his tongue, the warmth that his hands still felt though the source had been set aside. He listened to the soft ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, the drip of water in the sink that fell at irregular intervals.

A car drove up on the street. A door opened. A door shut. The car drove off. Taxi, Sherlock thought, his mind ripped away from his moment of solitude, pulled back into the ever continuous reasoning. He heard a key in the lock and the sound of the door being opened and closed. John or Mrs. Hudson? A heady footfall on the carpet said John but the crinkle of shopping bags said otherwise. The probability that John had gone out to do the shopping, it being Wednesday, was extremely unlikely. Mrs. Hudson then. There was a slight pause and then the footsteps began to climb the stairs. With a wave of guilt Sherlock realised that their land lady would be the one providing them with food this week. Again. He was irritated at being bothered however and, not wanting to deal with her or her silly trifles, grabbed a magazine off the coffee table, stretched out on the sofa and placed the magazine in front of his face. A childish memory rang out in his mind, but he pushed it away before he'd really had time to process it. I can't see you, you can't see me.

The door to their rooms opened and the wonderfully familiar scent of John Watson wafted across the room to great him. Sherlock lowered the magazine in surprise and saw his friend set down three large shopping bags and the handful of post he'd been carrying. There was also a medium size packing box, the kind that books were delivered in. John was just slipping an arm out of his coat. He caught the sharp look of surprise on Sherlock's face just as he was clearing it away.

"What?" John asked, feeling self conscious as he always did when he was fixed with a stare from those startling blue eyes.

"Nothing," came the reply. Then, with a glance at the bags at John's feet, "You've been shopping."

"Yes" John answered, slightly perturbed that this should come as a surprise to Sherlock. "We needed a few things so I stopped and picked them up on my way home."

Sherlock sat up and held out his hand, indicating that he wanted the post but wasn't going to be bothered to get up and fetch it himself. John sighed, shrugged off his coat then, with post in hand, crossed the short distance to where Sherlock was waiting and, just to annoy him, pointedly set the lot down on the coffee table. John only received an eye-roll for his trouble. Typical Sherlock. No thank you. No nod of appreciation. Just a child-like desire for knowledge and compliance. Always thinking, always questioning and expecting. Typical Sherlock.

John turned back to where his coat had fallen in a heap and picked it up. He moved behind the door and hung it on the hook alongside Sherlock's. His gloves were protruding from deep within a pocket and his scarf was thrown over the lot. The scent of Sherlock was almost potent and John breathed in a deep lungful of the glorious scent, wishing he could bottle it up and save it for later. It was wonderful. Wholly unique and better than anything one could buy in any store, even the most expensive and fashionable shop in Heaven probably John thought. Sherlock had his own deep, rich scent and it coursed through John like wildfire. He felt his eyelids flutter as he sucked in another lungful. This was his favourite part of the day. Side-stepping the door, John retrieved the shopping from the floor and set about unpacking in the kitchen. There were more body parts in the fridge but he'd gotten so used to these occurances now that he pushed the milk and eggs in without another thought. Probably not the healthiest choice but what other option was there? Sherlock meanwhile was pre-occupied with sorting through the post. Bills, letters from people begging him to take their cases, and more bills. He sighed. Dull.

"Anything interesting?" John asked, reappearing.

"No" Sherlock replied coldly as he tossed the papers into the ever growing stack on the floor.

He couldn't deny though that the box had his intrigued. His name was written in a practiced cursive but there was no address on the box. Had to have been personally delivered then. Interesting.

John sat opposite him as he sliced the tape and popped the flaps of the box open. The contents made him feel sick and the urge to vomit threatened to overcome him. Seeing Sherlock turn deathly pale, John leaned forward and, with a mixed feeling of curiosity and dread, looked inside. A head, belonging to an infant no older than a year, lay nestled snugly on a satin pillow. John's resolve wasn't as strong as Sherlock's and he rushed to the toilet, violently vomiting up the remains of his lunch. When he returned Sherlock was reading a note that had obviously been stuck in alongside the macabre sight now resting on their coffee table.

"What's that?" John heard himself ask, sounding as if he had a head cold, trying to keep his voice from revealing how disgusted he was. Without looking up Sherlock began to read:

I've got another puzzle for you my dear.

You'll love this one.

I've made it rather more personal this time.

The better to keep you entertained.

M

Any colour left in John's face vanished. Sherlock watched his friend pale further, the vomiting having already made him sickly, his own fears intensifying, becoming more concrete.

"Moriarty," John whispered.

It wasn't a question.

Sherlock only nodded. John sat down on the edge of his chair not trusting his legs to hold him up. Sherlock stole a glance at John who looked as terrified as he felt, though he'd never admit it. It had been two and a half months since that dreaded night. Sherlock was still haunted by the grin on Jim's face, pure delight, as he'd pulled the trigger. A part of him had expected nothing to happen. Another bomb? How very unoriginal. But he'd been wrong. Dead wrong. He remembered the squeeze of his finger, the kick back from the gun, the split second when the gunshot rang painfully in his ears. He remembered all this as if it were happening now. Nothing had slowed down; there was no silver screen slow motion, just a blinding light and an infernal heat. Momentary but terrible it had thrown him backward with a tremendous force, knocking the wind out of him. His head had come down hard on the tiles and he lay there for a moment panting, trying and failing to regain his breath. Then there had been black. A cold, sinking blackness that seemed to stretch on forever. He could have sworn that he'd heard Jim's laughter, spilling over with pure glee, mocking him, filling his brain, his every sense, every nerve. But it could have been nothing more than a memory.

He and John had been in Hospital for almost a month. Though both of their injuries had been extensive, Sherlock had suffered so much more than John. He hated to undermine his friends' pain but he couldn't stop himself from feeling pity at his own expense. He'd gone temporarily blind, having been looking directly at the explosion as it had occurred, that part of him still desperately clinging to the belief that nothing would happen. For the next 72 hours Sherlock Holmes had lost his ability to see and with it his passage into the world of knowledge, reason and logic in which he lived. That place inside of him that he couldn't live without. He'd given up. For those few hours Sherlock Holmes had given up on life. On living. He no longer wanted to exist if he didn't have anything left to live for. He'd even gone so far as to ask the nurse to unhook the machines that were keeping him alive. For what good did it do for his heart to beat if he couldn't deduce reason and analyse? The nurse had laughed quietly to herself, patted his knee and muttered some kind of reassurances. He hadn't feel reassured and had told her so in rather a harsher way then he'd meant, but she'd already been gone by then. A few hours later his eyesight had begun to return and by the end of the day both his eyes had been working fine. John had never found out about the incident with the nurse. Both Lestrade and Mycroft had concluded that there was no sign of Jim. Neither a body blown to bits nor any sign that a living, breathing man had gotten up and left them among the rubble. Moriatry had simply disappeared. Vanished. Until now.

There'd been several photographs in the box along with the note and Sherlock was leafing through them, a clam expression back on his face. He handed them to John once he was done with them and, grateful not to have had to ask, John looked at them too. The first was of a dirt road, some trees. The sky was a clear, almost crystal blue and a single fluffy white cloud had been captured on tape. The second had been taken at night. It showed a dark alley. A large skip, contents threatening to spill over the side, sat in partial moonlight. There were no windows or doors. Just solid brick wall on three sides. A dead end. The third was of a white-washed wall. A slight shadow showed that it was actually two walls. A corner. A small handprint, in what could only have been partially dried blood, stuck out in sharp contrast at the bottom of the image. All three had been taken with an old-fashioned camera, the kind that printed the image out straight away. No photo editing here. John swallowed and looked up at Sherlock who was watching him intently. Sherlock made a small motion with the index finger on his right hand, implying that he wanted John to turn the photo around. A note, in the same handwriting as the name on the box, was written on the back of the last photograph. It read simply:

You've got three days.

Best of luck.

M

John felt his blood run cold. Three days to do what? None of these pictures even had anything in common! And the only link between them and the child's head that now lay on their coffee table was the single bloody handprint. But that could have been taken anywhere. White walls were more than common, as were trees and roads and dark alleys. Voicing these concerns, John was meet with a grim smile.

"There'll be something," came the court reply. "When was this delivered?" Sherlock questioned, the light of intrigue already playing in his eyes.

"I don't know," John answered, trying to think straight. "It must have come with the other post. It wasn't here when I left this morning. Hold on..." John muttered realising that there was another problem. "Does he mean three days from the time we received the box or three days from the time he had it delivered?"

His panic rising now, John looked at Sherlock for support, some kind of reassurance. The response that came did little to quiet his fears.

"Either way," Sherlock replied, smiling despite the obvious lack of amusement the situation presented, "we don't have any time to waste."

With that Sherlock bounded up off the sofa, scooping up the photos and the box as he went. Stopping only to throw on his coat and scarf and fixing John with an impatient look, Sherlock took off down the stairs and out the door, hailing a passing cab as he went. John, still sitting on the edge of his chair, the smell of Sherlock wafting all around his at the detectives frenzied stirrings, let out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding in the form of a quiet sigh. He took no pleasure in the deep, rich scent that was Sherlock Holmes this time for it was tainted now with his own fear and apprehension. With resolve in his heart John grabbed his coat off the hook where the absence of Sherlock's made it look abandoned and lonely. Shrugging it on and pocketing his revolver, John left the flat, closing and locking the door behind him. The sound of the taxi speeding away seeped up from the street below and then the all too familiar silence once again consumed the rooms of 221b Baker Street. The clock ticked softly on the mantelpiece, the tap dripped at irregular intervals and the old chipped coffee mug lay forgotten, its contents cooling with the knowledge that its former owner was very likely never to return.

Fin


End file.
